Opposite page, the
Vivo Barefoot Aqua,
left, and the Dopie
sandal (the simplest
of sandals). Below,
United Nude’s
Möbius, inspired by
the frame of Mies
van der Rohe’s
Barcelona chair.
Clark’s business
springs from his
belief that we’d all
be better off barefoot.

unnatural flex

‘Galahad’s anoverconfidentindividual.To start oneinternationalbusiness isextremelydifficult, to tryto run threeis on the vergeof beingfoolhardy.’

Lancelot Clark

van der Rohe’s Barcelona chair, the
Möbius’ sole, heel, foot-bed and upper are
all formed by one deftly manipulated
strip.

If you think this sounds like a lot to
balance, you’re not alone.

“Galahad’s an overconfident individual,” said Lancelot Clark, who still is leading shareholder of Clarks. He created the
Soul of Africa project and chairs the Terra
Plana board. “I originally bought Terra
Plana [in 1998] and when Galahad’s
mother died, he came back to England
and took it over. At the same time, he
started his other businesses. To start one
international business is extremely difficult, to try to run three is on the verge of
being foolhardy.”

Not that Clark senior should be overly
surprised, considering his son once ran
the New York marathon without any
training and finished in four hours.

“The thing that really struck me,” said
Harrison, “was the risks Galahad took
with Dopie. It’s such an unusual shoe, and
it took a lot of time to make — it was
hard to find the right tools and materials,
get the right weight and flexibility; it had
to be light but also stiff. Galahad had a lot
of patience. I don’t think any other shoe
company would’ve taken such a risk.”

Clark continues to be approached by
an aspiring designer every month, and
Koolhaas, United Nude’s creative director
in Guangzhou, believes his appeal is his
fearlessness.

“He’s a very interested person and has
built a reputation as one of the most
open-minded and exciting people in the
shoe industry,” Koolhaas said. “Young people come to Galahad, to United Nude,
with their ideas because we respond. Both
United Nude and Terra Plana have broken
some boundaries; particularly with United
Nude, we’ve created some shoes that didn’t
originate from shoes, in construction or
design. The Möbius is not a shape a shoe
designer would come up with because the
Möbius isn’t actually a very clever way to
make a shoe, according to traditional
methods.”

Clark himself realizes he may have
overdone it a tad. “I thought, ‘How hard
can it be to build a
shoe business?’ What a
mistake! I started
launching all these
other brands — it was
too many things, we
diluted ourselves. But
you learn from your
mistakes. I had this
utopian vision of all
these businesses working together like a
happy family or community, but we’re too
small, we don’t have
enough resource to do
that successfully.”

Clark may humbly
attest that he’s “doing
too many things not
well enough,” but the
figures tell another
story. Demand for
United Nude shoes
has grown from
15,000 pairs in 2005
to 100,000 pairs in
2009. Terra Plana
meanwhile has
increased production
tenfold, and the
company’s gone
from making
20,000 pairs of